


Thirty-Three

by prettydeathmachine



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Anidala, Death, F/M, I mean...kind of, Major Character Injury, Mild Blood and Gore, Obidala, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Sad, Sad with a Happy Ending, almost horror, also probable, and therefore, because obviously it's headed there as royally bizarre as this situation is, definite, for me it's very mild, it could be worse, morbid holiday time stories, obianidala, obikin, probable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-18 17:30:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21280553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydeathmachine/pseuds/prettydeathmachine
Summary: Anakin keeps remembering to come home, but that's about all he remembers.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, as well - Relationship, look you coud totally go with
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	Thirty-Three

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat sketchy on some details, you're free to take them however you please, I just intended this to be comparatively short. I'm like 90% sure that before all of this, there was more than just Anakin and Padmé's relationship being badly hidden. And it would have taken me a good three chapters to be very detailed on some of the events mentioned by the end, as well as the fine points of Obi-Wan and Padmé's fix it idea. As for that ending, yeah, this would be another massive thing I'm not going to finish quickly if I went on about the probable outcomes, but I think we know it's inevitably going sideways. So, the happy ending is and is not, and you can run with that for several miles.

He doesn’t ask if Anakin has gotten there yet, Obi-Wan knows he hasn’t. The entire atmosphere of Padmé’s apartment will change, the Force itself will change.

_Was it always like that, was it like that before?_ He wonders, absently, as he follows Padmé inside. It seemed like it had been like that, to a degree. It was just markedly different now. More extreme.

Seven years. It would be seven years of this soon. Perhaps, Padmé was right, no matter how upsetting, worrisome, that idea of hers was. Something had to change, this was well beyond intolerable, and the twins…the older they got, the more complicated this became. It was bad enough when they didn’t grasp the passage of time, worse when they _could_ grasp who Anakin was. Why couldn’t he have forgotten _that_? It would have made things easier. Anakin has never made anything easier, though.

The drink that he shortly has in his hand won’t either, unfortunately. He still has more futile hope in that glass than he does about anything else in this situation, especially with the Senator looking at him like that. Like she is about to address him in that capacity; official. For a moment, he strongly considers not allowing her to, simply interrupting it before it begins and giving her no need to speak. No need to inevitably fail to maintain a steady voice and clear eyes as she doesn’t in her official capacity.

It seems disrespectful, however, and their relationship _has_ drastically evolved over the last several years as one might expect when people have more of a reason to be so close. If it will really make her feel better to assert herself in this minimal way, not so much over him, but over an out of control situation…and it does need to be discussed. She’s already decided, he knows, but it needs to be discussed regardless.

“What we discussed earlier, unless you have thought of some other solution, I intend to go through with it. It isn’t ideal, but this nightmare has gone on too long. The last few times…” Her eyes shift from Obi-Wan as she pauses, briefly light upon the freshly repainted wall. Repainted, devoid of all decoration still, entirely replaced since Anakin cracked it from top to bottom the last time. A retaining wall, had to be replaced in the properties above and below as well. That hadn’t been all that had been destroyed.

Gaze returning to him, her voice is quieter already. “It’s been like it was the first few times. Like all of _this_ is being repeated as well. It’s only worse when he does know and you know what happened then. _That_ cannot happen again, Obi-Wan.”

No, it really could not. That had been…there were not words for it. What did you call something that was already unbelievable, unbearable, and utterly improbable managing to exceed itself in all of those things? _Anakin_. You call it _Anakin_. That was a terrible thought, one he would regret even more any moment now when he was actually present, looking like he was about to positively burst with happiness. Still more when that collapsed and left nothing but horror and anguish behind. Unless, of course, he didn’t come through that doorway cluelessly pleased because he knew. It felt like there were now upwards of thirty different Anakins now, it was that version his thought settled on.

“Padmé, I _agree_ with you,” Obi-Wan sighed, “I’m concerned about what happens if you _do_ keep him here. What happens when he is…aware of the situation and trapped here? And you operating on the assumption that it is indeed him leaving that-“

“It **is**. Until he is gone again, he doesn’t lose things again. When he is here for days, nothing resets, it’s only when he…does whatever it is he does. When he isn’t here any longer. Then it’s this, over and over again. _That look on his face_, Obi-Wan, I can’t do this again!”

There it is, her soft, collected tone has broken, and with it, everything else is swiftly following suit. He can’t help it and there is no reason to help it, he reaches out to take one of her trembling hands and holds it tightly in his own. There is no point in arguing the matter either, is there? She’s going to do this, the best that can be done is to try to assure it is as safely, reasonably done as possible. It might be much worse if she simply does this thing entirely alone. In the very real possibility of danger to her physically, the additional and perhaps finally too high emotional toll, and whatever price there may be to pay for the unnatural thing she proposes. No such thing leaves his mouth, she has started to speak again and to sound more resolved once more.

“It’s better for Luke and Leia, I cannot do that any longer either. They know and they ask, it hurts them terribly every time no matter if they are here or not. It’s the same pain and…”

“I know, Padmé, it’s worse. It’s terrible enough every time for you and I, but it is far worse for the children. They _are_ children.”

She doesn’t say it, but it’s there for a moment as clearly as though she did; _it was a mistake to involve them and it was your doing._ And she is correct, even though that unspoken lashing out of pain and frustration is just as clearly regretted, it’s true. Obi-Wan had thought that perhaps if Anakin actually saw them, furthermore, saw them actually growing and changing, that it might jar something permanently. It hadn’t, it had only been a momentary reprieve in the horrible experience of Anakin’s distress over their existing. Where were they, why couldn’t he see them? A thing that repeats every time, it has often been _The Thing_. The thing that forces the pretense to come to an end and for the truth to be devastatingly relieved. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were not absolutely, genuinely fresh every time for Anakin, but it is and there is no stoically handling it.

Not even when you have told someone the same impossible, nightmare news not once or twice but every so many months like clockwork for nearly a decade. Neither Padmé or Obi-Wan have ever really figured out how you tell someone such a thing, there has never seemed to be any better or worse way.

_And that sound he makes sometimes when he knows it’s true, when he starts remembering…_

“Besides,” Padmé sniffles, tries to be humorous, “Anakin being obliged to never be farther from one of us than the length or width of this apartment for the rest of our lives, does that sound like something that would displease him?”

The tone fell a little flat, too thickly wrapped up in tears she hadn’t gotten to really shed, but it was a good effort and Obi-Wan has to smile as he shakes his head and squeezes her hand a little more. “No, it truly doesn’t. That sounds like something he’d have written in one of those damn books of his, actually.”

That _does_ make Padmê laugh, just a bit, but it _is_ a laugh. It has been long enough that the discovery of such achingly personal things isn’t as painful, they can be funny now. It can be funny and sweet and ridiculous instead of heartrendingly painful that Anakin left a veritable stash of artwork, poetry, and thoughts. It can even be admitted that while the art is impressively good, the poetry is, by and large, not. Both of them know it is unlikely to ever stop being painful reading the rest though, there are infinite chances and warnings therein, right along with the funny things, the exceedingly clever ones, and the unbelievably precious.

Sometimes, they read like a silent scream that didn’t stop for years.

* * *

They figured out years ago what the window of time was for these visits, that on the following days Anakin would be coming home between a fairly precise one to two-hour timeframe. Sometimes, he’s early. Usually, he is right in the middle of that window of time. He has never been late. So, as the end of that timeframe becomes a matter of a few tiny minutes away, the apartment had grown into a heavy silence different from that which had begun it. It had been weighed with the stress of the situation as a whole, what they were setting about, the absurd sensation of guilt at what they intended, but it had rapidly become a thing of worry. He’d never not shown up, if he didn’t, what did that mean? That he never would again? The thought was relieving…the thought was a guilty and terrible one. And what would have stopped him, finally, from doing so? What might have happened to him? They couldn’t know, they would simply never know why Anakin had not come home, just as they would never know where he went or what he did when he wasn’t there.

Neither speak of these things at the moment, they keep their silence together until he _is_ unmistakably there. They keep to themselves their new guilt too. It’s a bad situation no matter how one looks at it, after all. To be as relieved as they both immediately are, does that imply they are happy about this situation, about what has happened to him and themselves? Does the dread so quick on its heels mean that they would rather he had been lost forever so that they could escape? It is better that neither of these things can matter for more than a few seconds, because the Force has suddenly erupted into life, the door opens and closes, and Anakin’s boots can be heard.

Padmé has met him in a matter of seconds, Obi-Wan lingers behind, it’s the usual way they do this so that the suspicion of why Obi-Wan is there at all is able to be countered before it becomes something that presses the reality into being given more quickly. It’s nice to have a few minutes, sometimes a few hours if things have been very carefully set up, before it turns into…**_that_**. Maybe it is cruel instead of kind to give him that, but not only has he never seemed upset about it afterward, but they also have to live this.

It isn’t just the reprieve of peace between storms, it’s that Anakin is laughing a bit right now in tired happiness, that he’s there and hugging Padmé and burying his face in her hair, that he’ll be talking to Obi-Wan and teasing him, as though nothing had ever changed. It’s that Anakin _somehow_ came through that door to be with them and they love him.

Sometimes, nothing having changed is also the hard part. Obi-Wan cannot act as he’d like to at first, it has to be how it was before. So, he doesn’t just as quickly end up at the door, doesn’t also end up embracing him, has to hang back instead and allow himself to be looked at as though it is the oddest thing that he’s there at all for a few minutes. Give Anakin a few minutes to disentangle himself from Padmé, for her say something about Obi-Wan being there.

She’s refused to turn loose of his hand and Anakin, like he has every time they’ve had this version of the scenario, looks like he is both too tired for this act and yet is compelled to continue it, compelled to also look like he may jump out of his skin. For a second, he appears to be a little animal caught between predators, no good option as to how to proceed. Anything he does is potentially more suspect, so he falls into ridiculous inaction before the both of them.

“Anakin, we’ve talked about this,” Padmé uselessly, gently tells him, “Obi-Wan _knows_.”

Yes, they’re going with this version tonight. A version _of_ that version, anyway. Because Anakin won’t be coming or going through that door again once the apartment has been sealed off.

“I think I’d remember that…” he mutters, unconvinced but with no recourse since it appears to be the case.

“It’s been a very long couple of days since we talked about it. I assure you, we _have_.” 

At least that isn’t a lie that Obi-Wan is telling, they most certainly have talked about it. Many, many times. Only, it has been years, not days, but they have indeed been long. 

He gives a soft smile, voice full of reassurance and affection as he continues, “Everything is fine, Anakin, we’ll have it all sorted out. You probably don’t even remember when you last ate anything, do you?”

Anakin is and is not reassured, is about as confused as he looks while his eyes move from Obi-Wan to Padmé and then back again. “I-_no_…”

That isn’t something out of the ordinary really, definitely not enough to set him off wondering more, picking at things in his mind. Maybe it is entirely believable that he forgot something that important, which is frightening, but not entirely unreasonable, no. He can’t actually recall what he did _ten minutes ago_, that is frightening as well, but he does remember bits of things felt and that makes a difference in the hazy not-quite-reality he is within. That terrible and terribly important things had been going on without stop, that he absolutely _had_ to get back here. This would all surely be much clearer after he got some sleep, he was going to feel incredibly stupid later, he was sure of that too.

And _actually_…he is really hungry, now that he’s thought about it, and whatever that smell is, it’s quite appealing.

As though this has not played out before, Padmé gives a bit of a laugh and begins to usher, initially half pull, him toward the sofa and the containers that are the source of the alluring food smell. 

“See? It’s alright, come sit down and eat, you’ll feel better. We can talk about it all over again later if you want.”

Of course, he goes along after that initial half of a second’s worth of hesitation. The closer he gets to the sofa, once he’s actually sitting down and it is just so remarkably comfortable…well, yes, they’re probably right. This is really too good to question and he’s not certain how this could be better; Obi-Wan isn’t upset about this, neither is Padmé, he’s home and with _both_ of them, and that is definitely one of his very favorite things in that container. Maybe they all died and this is some sort of afterlife. What an incredibly morbid thought. He might take it though, it obviously was a good thing if so.

** _Something isn’t right. _ **

It’s got to be the ease of this moment, the absolute goodness of it. It’s unreal, it feels _unreal_, but it’s so very good that it cannot be argued with even in his own mind. Things are not so clear there anyway, that feels a little off too, but again, not so off as to be a critical issue worthy of attention quite yet. Things had not felt so clear in Anakin’s mind for…he wasn’t sure at all, but a while, it had to be a while, it felt like years and years. Like everything was at once too fast and too slow, frenetic and sluggish. Ill-defined and yet sometimes, _sometimes_ agonizingly clear. Bits and pieces of too many things that should fit together if he could find all of them and arrange them correctly.

Why do that when he’s busy having a purely enjoyable moment? Those pieces all have sharp edges.

* * *

This time it takes Anakin an hour to ask something that begins to shatter the moment. There have been a handful of close calls, a few of them simply being him pausing in the middle of speaking, moving, eating even to look off as though there was something only he was hearing. It’s a familiar look, but one Padmé and Obi-Wan know isn’t because he and he alone hears the caff machine making the tiniest of strange sounds that needs looking into. It is much deeper a distraction than that, and much more similar to something that Obi-Wan is certain Padmé was never witness to until he began returning like this. It’s a vaguely haunted look, a look of life itself having tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at something phantasmal. A look he sometimes got when it had been more than a week without sleeping during the war, when there would be a pause in all action long enough and Obi-Wan was, honestly, a bit disturbed. Because for a few minutes, Anakin would legitimately not be there in any sense other than physically present, the rest of him minding something through the Force that no one was party to. That maybe no one else could be.

_It was always too loud, too demanding, too much, wasn’t it? _

For the millionth time, Obi-Wan wants to apologize, wants also to be frustrated by how simple it would have been if either of them had actually spoken or listened. Sometimes, he has done those things, most of the time though, it’s more painful to do so. Anakin is only going to lose the entire conversation again and be more upset during it. And in the end, it hasn’t done anything to make him feel any better about any of it. It can’t, because it doesn’t change, doesn’t progress. 

_Perhaps now, perhaps this time…_

“Did we…is the war over?”

That’s it, that’s the question.

He’s looking so very confused again, an edge of distress to the way he is once more looking between the two of them. Of course, it isn’t surprising that it is such a question; Anakin remembers the war. Anakin is still living there. It comes up naturally in conversation for him, is easy to recall and hold onto. Until that doesn’t parse with the mood of the room, the unhurried calm and positively unreal happiness, how all three of them even have time to be here together like this. Then the questions must come, and they come with a lurking dread because somewhere in there, he _knows_. He just hasn’t hit the wall of that knowledge yet.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan answers with a hesitance that worries Anakin more, and still more when it seems that Padmé is being looked to for confirmation of some sort. “_You_ did, really.”

Very slowly, Padmé leans in to kiss Anakin’s cheek, her voice almost a whisper of calm, “I’ll be right back.”

That’s concerning, Anakin very much doesn’t want her to leave and it isn’t because he simply doesn’t want that, as usual. He’s suddenly afraid of her leaving, becomes smaller where he sits in reaction to her getting up and going away. 

All he can do is look at Obi-Wan far too imploringly and ask, “Did I? I don’t…I don’t think I did that.”

In the past, this is a conversation that has carefully been tailored to both Obi-Wan and Padmé being present. It devolves quickly, it is better if they are both there. Padmé won’t be gone long, however, this is all going as intended. She’s gone to finish what they began before Anakin arrived, and if they’re right, he won’t be able to leave this time. If he sees it, if he knows, it could tilt the situation, though. He has to remain where he is and occupied safely, calmly.

Obi-Wan rises from his chair to take up the space she vacated on the sofa next to Anakin, it’s also better if one of them is close to him, and touching him is preferable. Anakin remains the calmest for the longest time this way. 

His hand coming to rest just below Anakin’s shoulder as he speaks. “Anakin, there are some things that you are going to find upsetting about what I’m going to tell you. Please, let me finish and try not to be so-“

“What happened? Obi-Wan,” his voice is at first demanding in a specific, frightened and attempting not to be sort of manner, but then it is hushed by the same, “I don’t know.”

No, it isn’t just the fear, the beginning of an electric twinge that this is all terribly, terribly _wrong_…it’s also embarrassment. Shame that he doesn’t know, understand, or remember. What a very important thing to have forgotten. How could he? Something had to have happened to cause him to not recall this or much of anything else that was, apparently, recent occurance. And that too is frightening and shameful. He probably did something awfully stupid again and was finally hurt too badly doing it. He’s finally turned his brain into so much incompetent uselessness. What else has been lost in there?

For a second, there is almost an answer from within himself. Tiny pieces of things spin about and are gone. _Just for a second. _

Obi-Wan shushes him and it has the intended effect, Anakin does settle down again. It is definitely the not at all unkind _shhh_ combined with the squeezing of his arm, the relocation of Obi-Wan’s hand to his shoulder, that makes the jumping of his heart stop. It’s alright. It isn’t alright, but it _will_ be.

“I know you don’t, that is why you mustn’t get upset about it and have to let me finish. Alright?”

Anakin doesn’t think he’ll be able to do that, but he nods anyway. The resolve to try extremely hard is there anyway.

That resolve breaks several times, but not enough to keep his little interruptions, exclamations and questions mostly, going. Then again, that could be a result of his total shock, and the things that bubble back up into legitimate reality as Obi-Wan speaks of them. He doesn’t want to believe so many of them, but they’re real. He remembers them. Can see and feel them happening all over again with such an intensity that he actually doesn’t notice Padmé returned until she os stroking his hair. It keeps him from losing it utterly when reality cracks.

Anakin’s head is shaking, but it isn’t in denial. It’s desperation to make this stop.

“Stop. Stop talking. I can’t…I can’t,_ I can’t._”

No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t hear it at the same time that it was happening somewhere else in his mind, while trying to parse it with what was the present and how that didn’t exactly align in a feasible way. And then the horror hits, because the recollection isn’t stopping now. In a matter of seconds, at least in everyone else’s reality, he’s relieved almost two days worth of atrocity, madness, and agonizing distress.

He does it, he makes _that_ sound. A low, deep, guttural sound of absolutely intolerable pain. They know by now what it is he’s hit upon, that any second now his tear filled eyes will rise to the windows and seek out the Temple. **_Because he did that__._** No amount of panicked sounding repetitions of I_ didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t_ make it anything other than what it is; entirely true. It’s not much better when he stops saying that, it always devolves into senseless muttering that often enough isn’t even properly words.

It was like this on Mustafar too. There had just been yelling and pacing to go along with the other senselessness.

And now they had to talk about that too, because once the recollection of having been entirely serious about killing both of them has ran its course, has settled upon the obvious fact that he didn’t, once the sobbing he’s doing has calmed enough, Anakin has some questions. He always has questions, of course. Too many of them to come out at first, too many that cannot possibly be put into a reasonable string of words either. They come out like they usually do, in so many fragments, interrupted by each other and giving himself the answers, or partial answers even as he asked.

“How can you…” _sit here with me, be anywhere near me,_ “That wasn’t what I meant to do. What happened-where are our children, Padmé?” He doesn’t use their names, he doesn’t know their names, he always has to be told.

They are remembered now, however. Not as they are presently, but as the way they had felt in the Force, in the sounds they had made as newborns. It will take longer for him to become stuck on the idea of them so much that it obliterates the fear of being anywhere near them with the other things so freshly done from his perspective, but it is the beginning of it. The immediate fear for them, that perhaps they are not here because they died or were taken away somehow, is very present in his tone and in the terrible look he gives them both. Pleading, it is a pleading expression. Begging them, as though they could have changed it if it was the case, as if they had all of the power in the galaxy.

“They’re fine, Anakin. Luke and Leia are perfectly fine, they just cannot see you quite yet.”

Padmé’s answer is interrupted before it can continue, it really can’t be helped. Anakin is clearly quite overloaded.

“Why?” 

A stupid question given on fried impulses. He knows why. Because they’re having to tell him these things, because he’s having to remember, because even clueless, if not more so, he’s dangerous and upsetting. So, he doesn’t press that any further when no answer is forthcoming and he’s been allowed to figure it out, just lets his gaze drift back down to the carpet.

“_Luke and Leia_,” he belatedly repeats. Saying it makes it differently real, begins to bring up other incredibly hazy, impossible to hold onto things. It hits him that he’s spent time with them before, that they were not infants, and that he could not possibly be happier or sadder about everything, but…none of it is developed enough.

Obi-Wan is nodding, he catches it out of the corner of his vision but doesn’t stop looking at the floor. Anakin starts to ask five other things, but what comes out is, “Why didn’t I remember? When…what else happened? I killed Palpatine.”

Again, Obi-Wan nods. It’s his turn this time. Taking turns with this has made it slightly better; one of them can do it, the other can be there for support. It doesn’t have to be the same person every single time, and if it’s decided ahead of time, it can be approached better. As much ‘better’ as it can possibly get.

“You did. Once you…once we were able to talk to you, you wouldn’t leave Mustafar.”

“Because he was coming there, he was close.”

“Yes, and you were right about that.” In all this time, it has never made Anakin feel any better, this tiny ploy the he might have otherwise enjoyed, but Obi-Wan says it anyway. Is compelled to give whatever possible because of what is about to happen. “It wasn’t a very protracted fight, but you did kill him.”

“It _hurts_.”

Padmé looks ill, the color leaving her face. It’s going to be one of _those_ times, then. It is going to be like watching a hopelessly glitching droid for a time, starting and stopping, on a loop of not merely remembering but _experiencing_ once again and having its own statements come spilling out as though everything was indeed replaying right there, right now. Only, of course, it isn’t a droid. It’s Anakin, and as confused as he is the entire time, he _feels_ it. _For the what? Thirty-first time? _She wonders, feels badly about not knowing exactly, given what it is. If for none of the other very good reasons, it has to stop for this one.

Anakin’s face gives a minor twitch, the confusion deepens as he isn’t sure whether he is there or here, why that came out of his mouth and yet quite literally is painfully aware of why. Everything is beginning to hurt,_ it feels like…_

“I was hurt, something happened. That’s why I don’t remember. Isn’t it?”

_If feels like…_an impact that should be lethal. That is lethal, just not instantly so.

It’s hard to breathe, it was hard to get those words out and not sound like he feels. He’s unaware that he has begun a death grip on Obi-Wan’s hand.

Obi-Wan is quite aware but has never tried to make him stop it. He lays the other hand over it for no other reason than caring. Perhaps that isn’t entirely true, it is also to quell the desire to do anything that will make it worse any moment now. If it isn’t something he could do to be comforting as it happened, he can’t very well do it now, it will be exactly as it was then for Anakin. It had been horrific getting him in that ship like that. And he’d just kept saying it, like he was right now. Of course, it’s so much clearer now because Anakin’s face can move properly and he isn’t choking on anything, for one thing.

“_Hurts_…” Almost muttered, the edge of desperation keeps it from being that quiet, the weight of confusion keeps it from being louder.

His face twitching isn’t enough this time, his head shakes like that will clear it. It doesn’t, it just produces a sharp intake of air at how unpleasant a sensation doing so is. Like the extreme grip he’s got on Obi-Wan, he isn’t very aware that he’s breathing hard. Hard but shallow. Not aware the trembling is starting or that his eyes have gotten wide in the seconds it has taken for them to lift from the floor.

Padmé is stroking his hair again, softly telling him it’s alright, but that usually calming, especially good bit of physical affection isn’t making it alright. It’s very difficult to stay with the feeling, with the sound of her voice. With the comfort of both of them.

“I don’t…I don’t think it is…something is wrong. It’s _really_ wrong.”

_It feels like…_his bones are cracked open, all of them. Like his insides are all torn apart. Like his skin is gone.

He isn’t going to hit on it for a little while longer and it’s cruel to let him. Next is the sliding into panic and pleading._ I can’t breathe. Please, please, what is happening? Make it stop. I can’t see. _They’ve heard it, they’ve seen it. This and the first time, when it was happening. Anakin hadn’t been capable of being so clearly verbose about it then, but eventually, when so much of his being coherent went away, and yet viciously not enough, he _had_ been begging. Over and over again through the Force, the words were not necessary there, the steady stream of begging Obi-Wan to **_make it stop _**was absolutely clear without them.

That wasn’t possible then, not really, but now he can at least expedite this process. Ripping off the worst bandage possible is still not easy, he has to take a deep, calming breath before he can say it.

“Anakin, you died.”

The impact of that is swift, the explosion of denial, of flat refusal and rejection in the Force is rather like a living thing. This is when Anakin usually breaks something, though that tends to happen when he doesn’t remember quite this vividly. It is, presumably, harder to stay with the rejection of this reality long enough for it to be destructive.

Still, the table rattles, something closer to the kitchen dances its way to the floor as he rapidly speaks. “_No, no, no_, I’m _here_. I’m right here! I can’t-it-that’s not funny. I’m not _dead_, I can feel you, I…”

There is no point in telling him that they don’t understand it any more than he does, that they damn well don’t find anything funny about it either, that he absolutely _is_ dead. Not right now, he won’t hear them. There isn’t much point in trying to keep him calm or give him comfort either, he doesn’t seem to know that is going on either, but it has to happen. Not for Anakin, for themselves. It’s impossible to watch and listen to him and refrain from trying.

For the thirty-third time, there is no relief or righteous triumph in Palpatine’s defeat. He’s already dying when it happens. The dying is part of it, if the brand new Emperor hadn’t been paying so much attention to the entertainment factor of cooking Anakin to death with Sith lightning, he might have noticed the lava. It’s Palpatine that ends up quite literally burning to death. The damage is done, though.

For the thirty-third time, there is very little that isn’t agony. His bones feel broken because they _are_, both from the severe impacts he’s taken and from cracking under the protracted torment of Palpatine’s preferred weapon. His skin _is_ raw, cracked and bleeding, missing entirely. His insides _are_ so much overheated, ruptured, hemorrhaging mess. His vision is almost nonexistent, _is_ nonexistent in one eye because he doesn’t have that eye anymore, it had popped. It’s real. He feels these things because they are _real_. And the screaming he cannot help when he tries to move, when he somehow manages to do it with Obi-Wan’s help, isn’t a scream. It is a choking, gurgling, dying animal sound. That is what he is now, a dying animal.

For the thirty-third time, he fights against being that. There are only two drives he possesses; return to the ship so he can be with both of them, make it stop. Once he gets there, he thinks as much as he capable of thinking any longer, it will be alright, he can die. It will stop then and it will be alright. But it isn’t alright and he doesn’t die. He can’t do that yet, Padmé is having their baby. There are hours that drag on impossibly, they aren’t on the ship anymore and he can’t care where he is, so long as they are close enough it doesn’t matter. Like the things being said around him, sometimes to him and sometimes about him that he cannot entirely hear or understand. He hears the children he won’t ever see, though, and so much more clearly, is aware of them in the Force. That is good, it’s very good, and he can’t see or hear anything at all anymore, but knows Obi-Wan is there and that is also very good. Relieving.

For the thirty-third, not thirty-first, time, Anakin Skywalker dies.

* * *

It takes a long time for Anakin to say anything again, longer than it takes him to otherwise respond to both of them in other ways that make it apparent that he is more lucidly with them again. He’s ended up in a ball on the sofa at some point, his head in Padmé’s lap, his hand still retaining the grip on Obi-Wan’s. The shivering hasn’t stopped and he seems to be in no hurry to move still, his voice, ironically, is the epitome of haunted.

“It’s been years, hasn’t it?” He asks in that hollow, exhausted, horrified tone. 

Padmé answers him, brushing the hair back from his face yet again, “Seven, standard, in two more months.”

“And this happens every time.” It isn’t a question, he knows he does. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He means it, of course, and he means for _everything_, not just for doing this to them several times a year, every year, for almost a decade. For a moment, he only questionably hears Obi-Wan’s reassurances, he’s a little distracted by the things that are different now that he remembers. They look different. Obi-Wan has so much more grey and white and silver in his beard, it has spread beyond his temples too. Padmé’s features are sharper, the faintest of lines are trying to take hold around them, there is a hint of silver in the darkness of her hair too. Well, they _would_ look different, wouldn’t they? He’s probably making all of that happen faster too.

“…since you don’t forget again while you are here, we’re going to try something to keep you here with us. Are you alright with that, Anakin?” Obi-Wan was saying, asking.

Anakin nods, becomes aware that he should stop holding onto him so hard and slowly loosens his grip. 

“Yes. I don’t want to go anywhere…I don’t know where I go, but I don’t _want_ to. I want to stay with you. I don’t want to do this again. _Please_.”

That _please_ is so plaintive it’s painful. The eyes the are still too large with fear and suffering that settle on Obi-Wan are as well. It’s terribly like that time he was very sick as a child and was terrified of his Master so much as walking far enough away from him, but wouldn’t say such a thing.

Obi-Wan’s smile is and is not forced as he too nods, “That is what we will do, then.”

“I don’t want to be dead.” 

That is a terrible thing to say, Anakin regrets it immediately. No one needs to hear _that_. He’s sure they have before, no less. With the way that Obi-Wan’s mouth has to fight turning in a way that denotes pain and how Padmé is leaning over to press kisses to his face, he’s more than sure. 

He’s quick to add, “Thank you. I don’t understand how I’m here. How it’s…like this.”

How he is there so corporeally if he’s…a ghost. Not that he’s any kind of expert on that sort of thing, but he didn’t think that the dead could be petted or kissed, certainly not that they could eat entire greasy sandwiches on the couch like it was just another evening. That’s what he means.

“We don’t either, but it’s always this way. The first time you came home…” Padmé hesitates, she isn’t sure that saying this is a good idea. 

It’s just more pain for everyone that needn’t be said, but it’s already been started and Anakin is looking up at her, waiting on her to finish. It’s the look of someone who wants to be spoken to more than they want the words. Like when the children are so tired they are only marginally awake, yet will not allow a story to be put off unfinished. 

“I didn’t know what to think. It was like nothing had happened at all, and you were…well, _here_. I could hug you and you were so upset that I was crying, you wiped tears from my cheek.”

_That I made you cry again because I came walking in here from a grave I probably don’t have. _

No, of course, Anakin doesn’t say it, but it makes him feel terrible that he’s been tormenting them like this. It doesn’t matter if it is clearly out of his control, he’s still doing it, they’ve still been hurt by it. It still makes him feel even more guilty that he’s silently glad that if it is this way, at least he can be here in a way that seems to be very tangible. He could appear looking as nightmarish as he knows he had to have when he died, dragging himself around phatasmally, making ghoulish sounds and being unable to affect anything. It really could be worse.

“It’s because of what I did.” 

Anakin doesn’t think that feels entirely right, it doesn’t lock into place the way other things have, but there’s something legitimate about the thought. And it had to come out, they are both looking at him in a way he doesn’t deserve to be looked at. The love he feels around them that’s captured therein, he doesn’t deserve that. He deserves to do this until the very galaxy fades away…but they don’t.

Oh, he’s said that before too, hasn’t it? It is again there in their reactions, and he wonders, should he actually get to remain this time, how long it will be before anything he says or does is truly original again.

To their continued credit, they try to behave as though this isn’t the case. Obi-Wan is shaking his head, the smile he wears is both abysmally sad and filled with truth.

“I think it is more likely that you are here because you are unable to let either of us go.”

Anakin is _almost_ ready to be vaguely annoyed, despite it feeling quite true. He’s dead. He doesn’t want lessons about anything right now. Ever, actually, since dead isn’t a correctable condition.

Obi-Wan is continuing though, “You might be able to if you were aware you are…no longer alive in the first place. The longest time period is only ever three days, Anakin. Then it is back to the beginning again.”

It feels quite unlikely to Anakin that he would come to some resolution of acceptance that extreme, but it also feels good to have something as a slightly more fitting reason. 

Slowly, carefully so that he isn’t disturbing either of them, he sits up. In the end, he does have to somewhat pull them both closer so that he hug both of them at once. 

“I love you," he says, as though that is not abundantly clear.

Literal death itself couldn't stop that, couldn't impede the driving force of the need to be with them, but he hasn't other words at the moment. There are no better words right now. 


End file.
